The Faroese language

Faroese is a North Germanic language spoken by about 70,000 people on the Faroe islands (Føroyar - literally 'sheep islands' in an earlier version of the language). It is generally very closely related to Icelandic, and hence to Old Norse as well. However, even so, it is not mutually intelligible with Icelandic in speech and just in writing.

Faroese (Føroyskt) too developed from Old Norse through the middle ages and later, although arguably it has had a more diverse outside influence. It has been influenced by Irish, as Irish monks are now thought to be the earliest settlers of the Faroe Islands, and these Celtic populations had settled the islands prior to the arrival of the Norwegian Vikings. To some extent Danish has influenced the Faroese too, and the Danish language is almost universally understood and spoken on the islands. It has also generally been more open to outside influence than Icelandic, adopting some foreign loan words for foreign terms (whereas Icelandic has generally more frequently opted for making up their own terms for things like a 'computer').

Faroese’s pronunciation scheme, a bit like Danish, is allegedly to be very difficult for foreign learners. It has some aspects that are common to Scandinavian languages, however, such as especially “r” in consonant blends. Generally, Faroese is not intelligible with other Scandinavian languages, but bears many similarities to them. This is particularly so in relation to some dialects of Scandinavian languages rather than others: for example, it is said that the Norwegian Nynorsk dialect bears many more similarities to Faroese than the written standard Norwegian Bokmål dialect does.

About Faroese conjugation

The vast majority of Faroese verbs are conjugated by these major factors:

tense - Faroese has three simple present, past, and future tenses, although compound tenses are possible

mood - it indicates the attitude of the speaker; in Faroese the most common moods are: the indicative (e.g. 'eg andi' - 'I breathe') and imperative (used in commands, 'andar' - 'breathe!'); Faroese allows the creation of the conditional mood and also a subjunctive mood too;

aspect - this feature connects the Faroese verb to the flow of time; you have that distinction in English in, for example, 'I do' and 'I have done' or 'I have been doing'

In the Faroese Cooljugator, we try to provide you as many of these factors of Faroese conjugation in both of its varieties as possible.